


lokabrenna

by trell (qunlat)



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Growing Up, Old Norse, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1606769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>lokabrenna</i> — “Loki’s torch; the conflagration of Loki,” referring to the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skeggǫld, Skálmǫld

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my eternal partner in crime, Gregory; invaluable to all parts of this story, from plot to research.

_skeggǫld, skálmǫld_ —an axe age, a sword age  
a line from the Völuspá, spoken by a völva to Odin.

* * *

The very first thing Stoick had taught Hiccup about being jarl after passing the mantle had been just this: _don’t fan the flames when the Great Hall is packed._

At the time, Hiccup had assumed it was the sort of arcane advice jarls usually gave to their heirs regarding the delicate nature of negotiation; now, however, as he sat in the ornate seat at the ostensible head of the round table that ringed the Great Hall fire, surrounded by the majority of Berk’s population and sweating, he was starting to wonder if his father’s advice hadn’t been of a more literal dint.

On the other side of the table, Fishlegs was saying, “Hiccup, the fishermen have been coming ‘round to the dragon training ring to complain almost every morning about how the dragons have been hunting down too many near the shores. They’re worried about our food stores for the winter, but it’s almost laying season and the dragons need to eat—”

“The _people_ need to eat, Fishlegs,” and this came from amidst the crowd, and was followed by a scattering of shouts and supportive cheers. “Our children’s lives are more important than those of your dragons!”

“Hiccup?” said Fishlegs.

Hiccup, who had been pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes in an effort to abate his building headache, looked up. Dozens of expectant gazes had fallen on him, and he sighed, scrubbed a gloved hand over his face to rid himself of the forming sheen of sweat—next time, he promised himself, he’d listen to Stoick’s advice about the Hall fire–and said, “We’ve been preparing for just this, guys. That’s why we worked so hard to expand the harvest, wasn’t it? And why we’ve been working to expand the herds?”

“And it’s working!” Fishlegs exclaimed. “Gothi says the harvest yield, together with all the elk we can hunt, should be enough for the season as long as we’re careful, especially with the new trade routes.”

“From his weapons on the open road, no man should step one pace away,” groused a man over Fishlegs’s shoulder, and slammed his fist down on the heavy wood of the table for emphasis. “If anything happens to our stores—if there’s rot—we’ll all end up dead and the dragons’ll end up eatin’ _us_. The last two winters were harsh, and if Bucket’s groanin’ is anything to go by, this one’ll be just as bad.”

“Need I remind you,” said Hiccup, evenly, slowly, thinking all the while of how Stoick had used to simply shout his orders over the hubbub of the hall and have everyone promptly fall in line because he was the _jarl_ , he was Stoick the Vast, he’d bash all their heads together and kick them off the island himself if it came down to it, “that the dragons are currently our primary line of defense against our new aggressor? _They_ are our weapons. Bjarnardalr and Lofot might be preparing for war against us. If we are attacked in the middle of the winter season—”

“What good are defenses if the people behind them are dying,” barked the same man behind Fishlegs, and Hiccup took a deep breath. Perhaps if he could pitch his voice like Stoick had, so that it rang against the walls and bespoke all the authority of a true leader, if it had behind it the illusion of a viking that was seven feet tall and at least half as wide. “Get some of the dragons out of here. Or get them to hunt or eat somethin’ else! We can’t be riskin’ this for their hides, not when winter’s the most dangerous enemy out there, more so than Lofot or these bear-men—”

Hiccup opened his mouth.

The Great Hall door slammed open. The entire congregation turned; Hiccup craned around the high back of his chair.

Gustav, helmet slung around his back and messenger satchel over his shoulder, bolted inside, and, shoving between the men and women that hurriedly tried to push and shove each other out of his way, stumbled to a panting stop beside Hiccup. “My jarl!” he gasped.

“Gustav,” Hiccup said. “What is it?” It was a nearly irrelevant question; the timing was right, and Hiccup was sure he knew exactly what Gustav had come to report.

“The raiders are returning! The flight is returning!” Gustav cried, for the benefit of the surrounding townspeople as much as for Hiccup, and the entire of the Great Hall burst into cheers.

Hiccup found himself being helped out of his seat— _ah, courtesy among the eastmen for the cripple at last_ —as the people in the hall moved in one great mass towards the flung-open doors, to better see the returning raiding party and to allow them entrance to the meeting when they arrived. Hiccup himself gently pushed away the hands of the man that had helped him to his feet, clasping the man’s shoulder briefly to indicate that the gesture was appreciated, and made his way to the front, so that he might stand on the steps and greet the raiders as his position dictated.

He had a personal stake in their return, too, of course; Astrid had lead this party, as she had the previous season, and she had been joined several other younger vikings that had just been granted leave to ride their dragons to the shores of the westmen. Beside him, Fishlegs, who had managed to shove his way forward, said, “Do you suppose there’s any chance they encountered new dragons in the west?”

“They didn’t last time,” Hiccup said, quietly, for only Fishlegs to hear. “I’m not sure I’d want them to. We might be the only ones to have figured out dragons in the Barbaric Archipelago, but who’s to say someone among the westmen couldn’t do the same, if they had them?”

The crowd fell silent in anticipation, then, as the heads of the raiding party—followed by the colorful bobbing forms of their dragons—appeared over the hill. The larger ones were laden with bags that would contain treasure, and, Hiccup vehemently hoped, grain and other non-perishable provisions.

A familiar form with hair that flowed golden in the late afternoon sunlight strode over the crest of the hill, red cloak flowing at her back, and the crowd burst once again into cheers; and Hiccup, unable to restrain himself any longer, hurried down the Great Hall’s steps ahead of the others, leg clacking loudly against the stone even as the noise level rose once again. “Astrid!” he called, “Astrid!”

“My jarl!” Astrid shouted in return, and hefted high the bag she held in her hand, a gift that would symbolize the raid’s usefulness to Berk. Hiccup had no doubt that most of their gains would go to the town, rather into the Haddocks’ own coffers.

The raiding party spilled over the hill after her, shouting cheers of their own and breaking into a run towards the townspeople’s crowd; Hiccup found himself having to weave carefully out of the way of the barrelling forms of young warriors, shields bouncing over their backs and smaller willings clasped in their hands.

There were noticeably fewer of them than had left, Hiccup realized. Not a crushing victory, then, not like last time, where the casualties had been low and the deaths few; by his eyeballed count nearly a quarter of the forces Astrid had departed with were now missing, and his elation was dampened by the realization that tonight too many families would be holding feasts to the dead and not to the living.

He and Astrid, who had refused to break her stride amidst the running, reached each other at last and stopped, perhaps a foot apart: “I’m glad you’re not dead,” Hiccup blurted, automatic.

“I’m glad you’re not, either,” said Astrid, deadpan, and held out the ceremonial gift; Hiccup took it, and, without stopping to look inside, threw his arms around in her in a hug.

Astrid hugged him in return, pounding his back in the true eastman tradition of nearly beating the lungs out of your friends as well as eviscerating those of your enemies. They did not share any more intimate gestures; they had never been close enough for that, not even now that they had matching swords at their backs and matching rings on their hands. “You haven’t even seen what we’ve brought you,” she said, when they parted; and Hiccup grinned crookedly and said,

“I hope there’s food in the boats, Astrid. You wouldn’t believe how much everyone’s been on our case about this harvest, even though Gothi and Gobber and everyone who knows anything about farming says it’s set to be perfectly good.”

“There’s food,” Astrid assured him, and, as the commotion continued around them—families greeting their returning heroes, and others, Hiccup knew with a sickening surety borne of experience, looking frantically for faces they recognized and not finding them—dropped her voice, her expression darkening to match. “Hiccup, it didn’t—I—we lost people.”

“I see that,” Hiccup said, just as quietly, and, “it happens, Astrid. We are who we are. Every eastman knows there’s a chance they won’t return from a raid.”

“You don’t understand,” Astrid growled, and grabbed his hand as he attempted to turn away to lead the way back up to the hall, to make the official speeches required upon the raiders’ return. “It was my fault. Only my fault. I made a bad call, and people died.”

Hiccup stopped. Astrid’s gaze was cold, and harder than he recalled it being. “We can talk about this later,” he said, thinking of how his father had once called the phrase _the jarl’s last resort_ and almost feeling a coward for putting the subject off. He was certain there would be families at his door shouting for Astrid’s head, just as he was certain that her raiders would defend her honor and name to the death.

Astrid stared at him, but eventually gave a curt nod. “All right. We interrupted the meet, didn’t we?”

“You didn’t interrupt anything new,” Hiccup said, and they went up the stairs together.

The victory would be shouted to the townspeople, losses or not. Tonight life and death would be celebrated in equal measure, ale drunk to the glory and honor of both and prayers sent up to the gods for those that had been taken by valkyries from the field of battle. That was the eastmen’s way: to appreciate every moment it was, and remember those who fell.

Hiccup had never needed Stoick to teach him that.

* * *

The feast came almost immediately after the boats were unloaded, a task made quick by the participation of the entire town. After that, as soon as every treasure was stowed—save those that would be shown around the hall and every passed through every pair of hands—tables were dragged out into the Great Hall and out past the door, and food brought from every home. (So much for the concern over the harvest, Hiccup thought, when a party was involved; if there was one thing the eastmen knew how to do, it was throw a celebration.)

Darkness, which had been falling earlier and earlier in the past weeks as the end of the season approached, crowded in quickly. Torches were lit. Hiccup hardly noticed; every warrior and family wanted to tell him the tale of their victory (glorious and also bloody, much as Astrid had said, though of course they didn’t see it as a failure, not those of them that lived) and receive congratulations, and he found himself dragged from group to group to clasp hands and hear of each and every one’s prowess.

Astrid followed him in grave silence, save for when the warriors spoke to them; she congratulated them with the gravity of the commander, and Hiccup thought they appreciated that even more than they did the ceremonial thanks of the jarl, and rightly so.

“How bad could it have been?” he said to her, when they had a moment to breathe; she only glowered at him, and asked,

“Do you know Fjalar Hroaldson? Yay-high?” She made a gesture, her hand held flat just above her own shoulder level. “Nice lad, tamed that big green nightmare last spring.”

“Yes,” Hiccup said warily. “He has a lot of promise. His riding—”

“He’s dead,” Astrid said, bluntly. Hiccup shut his mouth. He didn’t get the chance to say anything more, then: already another family had crowded in to beg the jarl’s attention.

In the end he and Astrid ended up at the head of the largest feast table, near the door as was customary. Gobber, who had arrived sometime during the setup, ended up at Hiccup’s right hand, and Hiccup took the time to ask him, “How’s Toothless? I haven’t had the time to stop by and check on him.” Normally, Toothless would’ve been curled up around Hiccup’s chair in the Great Hall throughout the entirety of the meeting; Hiccup had missed him more than ever today.

“Oh, ‘e’s fine,” Gobber told him, gesturing with a fork over a plateful of beans and onions and a positively massive mug of ale, “rollin’ ‘round in the medicine longhouse like an oversized cat. That tooth that was givin’ ‘im trouble, you wouldn’t believe it, he just spit it out ‘n’ grew a new one before I even had time to get at his mouth with my pliers. Yer lucky to have a night fury, though I think he’s gettin’ stir-crazy, Hiccup. Take him flying!”

“Good,” Hiccup said, breathing easier for Toothless’s safety, and said, apologetically and not very truthfully, “I will.” He bit off part of his buttered bread and looked down the table before glancing towards Astrid. She gave the appearance of listening to what Fishlegs was saying beside her, but Hiccup could tell that her attention was elsewhere; her gaze, like his own, kept slipping towards the tables that had been taken over by the families of the lost, under the faded painting of Fólkvangr spread across the northern wall of the Great Hall.

When Astrid looked his way at last, Hiccup muttered, “Stay after the feast so we can talk? There’s something I need you to do, and you can tell me about what really happened with the raid.”

She nodded, silently, and something in Hiccup ached for how he could see whatever had gone wrong on the raid had hurt her. His head ached, too; the headache that had begun to build during the meeting had abated somewhat at its halting, but returned in full force at the festivities. Every family he spoke to reminded him, even now, of what needed to be done; of how many people he had to protect against the threat of war with Lofot and Bjarnardalr to the north.

It was the dragons, of course. It was always the dragons, with Berk; in this case it was that Lofot and Bjarnardalr wanted dragons of their own and were ready to try to take them by force, and their forces were great enough that Hiccup wasn’t at all sure that Berk could repel such an attack.

He drank his ale, and gazed with a concerned of thoughtfulness into the heap of beans and mutton on his plate. The Hooligan tribe could undoubtedly count on support from the Shivering Shores; Hiccup had been exchanging letters with their jarl for weeks by mail-carrying terror, and they were as staunch of allies as they’d ever been. The Bog Burglars, too, seemed willing to provide some amount of assistance, though Camicazi was always decidedly cautious when it came to risking her people; Hiccup suspected she would send forces that were skilled but not great in number, to minimize her losses if Berk happened to lose.

This was, of course, if they _did_ go to war with Lofot and Bjarnardalr. Hiccup still held out hope for some form of negotiation, and he was still waiting on the latest scouting report from Ruffnut and Tuffnut, who had yet to return from their latest assignment in the north; in particular, Hiccup hoped that if he could convince the third village in the region—Kopareykir—to swear allegiance to Berk, Lofot and Bjarnardalr would think twice about attacking the Hooligans, thus outnumbered.

Hiccup pushed the beans around on his plate. To his left, Fishlegs was talking about the growth of a recently-hatched clutch of nightmares, two of which were going to the Jorgenson family and one of which was to be given to Gustav, who had shown an affinity towards them, perhaps due to his years of following Snotlout around like Snotlout was his own personal deity. On his right, Gobber was engaged in a friendly argument with Mulch about the benefits of yak shit as fertilizer. Life, it seemed, went on, even in the face of war and death and amidst celebration; squabbles remained, dragons grew. People moved on.

He wondered, idly, if Stoick would be proud of his present political progress. Certainly the alliances in the Archipelago were better than they had been in years past; but Lofot and Bjarnardalr were as serious a concern as they’d ever been, and Hiccup worried often that their encroachment on Hooligan territory might give the opportunity to other, rival tribes to rekindle old grudges. Their ceasefire with the Outcasts worried him most.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and Hiccup looked up, startled. When he’d been a child, Gobber had once told him he’d end up losing his head if he kept getting so lost _in_ it.

To his surprise, Ruffnut and Tuffnut leaned around both sides of his chair with matching mischievous expressions, like cats that had just gotten into the butter. “Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the _Third_ ,” Ruffnut said, “my _jarl_ , have we got a report for you.”

“She’s got half the report,” said Tuffnut, and had to pause to keep his hair from swinging into Gobber’s food— _watch yerself, you menace_ , Gobber groused from where he was sitting—”I’ve got the other half. The _cool_ half.”

“When did you guys get back?” Hiccup exclaimed.

“And where have you been?” asked Astrid, turning their way.

“Hiccup’s had us flying all over the north,” Ruffnut said, planting her elbows unceremoniously on the edge of the table between Astrid and Hiccup; her braids, at least, were thrown back over her shoulders to keep from getting in the way. The dragon’s fang that hung from her neck swung loose. “It’s bloody good you’re home, Astrid, because we’re going to need people that’re good at swinging an axe.”

“That bad?” Hiccup said, immediately horrified. His food sat entirely forgotten, and Gobber had turned to listen in, too. “What did you see?”

“We-ell,” said Tuffnut from his right, and leaned in beside Hiccup on his left elbow while inspecting the nails of his right hand, “there were a lot of horses in the forest around Lofot, like, way more than normal. And at least two stockpiles. Now, it could definitely have been food, but it could also have been axes.”

“More boats in the town,” Ruffnut took over, “I watched their sea routes for two weeks—no increase in trade activity, and yet they’re building more and more. I’d say they’re definitely readying to hit us hard, chief.”

“Oh, gods,” said Hiccup, and ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll need to post sentries on the mountain passes immediately, and out on the fjord coast. I’ll call another meet tomorrow and talk to Fishlegs—” over next to Astrid, Fishlegs glanced over at mention of his name, but Hiccup gestured for him to keep doing what he was doing, and Fishlegs turned back to his conversation partner, “—and the next Thing is set for a week from now, which should be soon enough for me to get a chance to talk to Cami.”

“We’ll need to organize dragon teams that’re trained to go up against people,” Astrid said, frowning where she sat absorbing these new developments. “The raiders, plus people who are capable of defensive maneuvers—”

“Listen, jarl, if you don’t need anything else from us, we’ve got mead to drink and fish to eat, so—” Tuffnut pointed over his shoulder with a thumb, and Ruffnut nodded, the horns protruding from her helmet passing dangerously close to Hiccup’s ear.

“Go, go,” he said, waving them off, and, “just don’t forget to contact our outpost on the mainland about posting sentries.”

“Yes, my jarl!” said the twins, in unison, shoving off the table simultaneously and throwing him jaunty salutes; they disappeared past the other tables together, punching each other in the shoulder just like they had when they’d both been kids barely old enough for the dragon ring.

Astrid watched them go past Hiccup’s shoulder, fingers knit under her chin. “They’re doing well as your top scouts, then?” she asked, and sighed. “I feel like we’ve missed so much, being gone for months.”

“What you’re doing is important,” Hiccup said, feeling like he should reassure her in the face of the morbidity she seemed to be carrying and knowing Astrid felt more duty-bound to Berk than anyone he knew, more so, perhaps, than even Stoick himself had while serving as jarl.

“Of course I know that,” Astrid bit off, and closed her eyes. “That doesn’t mean I don’t need to catch up. You’ll fill me in later on everything that’s happened?”

“Absolutely,” Hiccup agreed, and went back to picking at his food, ruminating on war.

Berk had fought dragons for a lifetime, and had skirmishes with the neighboring tribes. It had always been painful—harsh—but that was a part of eastman life, too, no matter the circumstances; Hiccup only wished that peace came as easily to them as war, and that he wouldn’t live to see the Hooligans, all his friends and family, decimated by the greed of the neighboring lands.

* * *

“Two winters of near-famine for us,” Astrid was saying, as she paced near the fire, arms crossed, “and famine outright, for the Visithugs, the Oiks, and the Outcasts. I can understand why the people of Berk are afraid for this winter, Hiccup.”

“I can, too,” Hiccup promised. The Great Hall had emptied some time ago; Hiccup had lingered, remaining at the table with Astrid and with his pounding headache. Just now, he wanted little more than to pick up Toothless from the medicine longhouse and crawl into bed to sleep with the comforting rumble of the dragon breathing at the foot of his bed. “I appreciate the gravity of the situation, Astrid, you know I do. You wanted to tell me about what happened on your raid that we lost—eleven people?”

“Yes,” Astrid said, firmly, and forged on while Hiccup closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples in hopes to abate the ache. It helped that it was darker with most of the torches put out, and the embers of the fire at the center of the room remaining as light. “I had a man scout the village, but I didn’t tell him to remain long enough. We ambushed them, but just as we thought we’d won a massive party of them arrived from inland, and killed five of our men before we could form ranks. If I’d just taken more care . . .”

“Tell me who died,” Hiccup said, tersely. He would have liked to reassure her; but after the day, with his headache and his growing list of worries, he just wanted the facts. _I want my dragon. I want to go home. Some jarl I am, that people become numbers for the coming struggle._ Did Stoick worry about losing perspective, he wondered? Did Stoick start exchanging knowing faces and names for knowing manpower, knowing the town’s tactical weaknesses?

Was that why Stoick had passed the mantle so early?

Astrid told him the names, standing suddenly very still by the fire, a warrior at the ready, or a warrior giving her report. Certainly it was that, though Hiccup could hear from the way she described their skills and positions that she’d known these people; Astrid, too, must be facing the quandry of numbers versus people.

Hiccup sighed when she finished. He recognized at least three of the names on a personal level, knew the rest through family connections or meetings at the Thing or from dropping by the academy during Fishlegs’s training sessions; each loss held a personal reminder, no matter how distant.

“Well?” said Astrid, at length.

“Well, nothing,” Hiccup responded, and climbed out of his seat to lean forward on the table as he considered what still needed to be done before he could retreat to bed. Stoick, he recalled, had managed to keep his hours to ‘before sundown’, something Hiccup had yet to accomplish; someone always needed something, and far be it for the jarl to turn his people away in a time of need. (And these last two winters were certainly a time of need, he thought.)

“You need,” he found himself saying, as much to himself as to her, “to remember these are people you are dealing with, and not just resources. And I know you know that, but were you thinking about it when you were out there? When you sent that man to scout, were you thinking about victory, or about bringing everyone home?”

Astrid’s response was instant and furious. “I was thinking about _Berk_. Of course I thought about my soldiers—of course I was concerned with more than just _glory_. You know me better than to insinuate something like that.”

“Maybe I do,” Hiccup said, and frowned at the cracks in the wood of the table. The words came out without his stopping to think: “And maybe you messed up and there’s nothing to be done, Astrid. People died. Think about what you did to cause it, speak to their families, and don’t let it happen again.”

When he looked up Astrid was staring at him from where she stood by the fire. In the low-light shadows she looked terribly impressive, a barbarian queen of fire and darkness and with skulls on her armor and a sword at her back; every inch what a viking should be.

Astrid was the sort of jarl Berk had expected to have on its throne, not someone like him, and in the moment—despite what he’d just said, despite Astrid having lost lives and despite how well things had gone for Berk because of his own actions—he wondered if maybe things would be better if he let her take over, let her someone who knew and breathed battle lead in a time of approaching war.

But he shook the idea quickly, and said, exhaustion dragging at the words, “Listen, Astrid, I need you to do something for me, now that you’re back. I can’t send anyone else—I need a representative to make a show of strength in the town of Kopareykir, convince them to swear allegiance to Berk against Lofot and Bjarnardalr. No one’s better suited to that a warrior who is also the jarl’s wife and one of the greatest dragonriders in the entire of the Archipelago.”

“Kopareykir,” she repeated, rather hollowly.

Hiccup nodded, and ran a hand through his hair again, a nervous gesture that he’d grown used to carrying out as his hair went longer and longer uncut. “I’d like you to fly down there as soon as you can—you can take a day to stay here and speak to those families and prepare, of course, but after that I’d like you to be there and get their oath for us. Berk’s survival could depend on it.”

“Of course,” Astrid said, stiffly. She strode across the hall to him, and, as he watched in confused silence, bowed formally to him over the table. “As you ask, my jarl.”

“Astrid,” Hiccup said. He already regretted what he’d said; he did know Astrid better than that, knew she didn’t need further criticism. Alas, it was too late to change the words.

They stood in silence for a moment before Astrid turned to leave. He almost let her, and only turned to call, “Wait,” just as she was pushing open the doors.

“What is it?” she said, and Hiccup watched her fingers curl against her palm where she held open the door.

“Are you coming home tonight?” he asked, in a voice that sounded very small, even to him.

“I promised my aunt Eyja I’d visit her when I returned,” Astrid said.

“When you’re back from Kopareykir, then,” Hiccup offered, and felt as though he was grasping at straws. It didn’t matter—not really—but he had missed having a friend at his side, and now it seemed he’d put his foot in it as badly as he possibly could have; rather than reassuring Astrid like she deserved, competent commander that she was, he’d only berated her and second-guessed her decisions on the field. _He_ hadn’t been there, after all.

“We’ll see,” Astrid said, and he door of the Great Hall swung shut with a low-pitched thud behind her, hinges creaking.

Hiccup was left alone, and, after another minute standing at the table, he picked up his fur-lined cloak and made for the medicine longhouse.


	2. Morning Terrors

These days, mornings in Berk started with the off-key singing of the terrible terrors.

“Someone shut those cursed things up,” groused great-uncle Asgerd from the other side of the table, and Astrid, along with well over a dozen other Hoffersons of various familial extension, just barely refrained from rolling her eyes.

The longhouse that sat between the half a dozen Hofferson homes was full to the brim this morning, as it hadn’t been since before Astrid left on her raid, some weeks after the first two parties departed. Every uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, and grandparent Astrid had appeared to be present, each shoveling food into their mouth with a truly eastman sort of enthusiasm and elbowing for room at the table that stretched the length of the building.

“Dad,” sighed Agnes, a woman to whom Astrid was tenuously related to through her long-deceased father. She had a massive, graying braid of hair that stretched down to the small of her back, and had been mean with an axe when she’d been younger, leading raid parties of her own. These days, she ran a farm. “You know the terrors like to nest in the rafters, and there’s nothing we can do about it unless you’d like all the rats back instead.”

“Curse the rats, too!” thundered Asgerd, whacking his spoon against the wood of the table, and this time every Hofferson _did_ roll their eyes, Astrid included.

Few things had changed about the Hoffersons in the past few years, and Astrid often thought they were the only thing about Berk that seemed to remain stable. Even her seat at their table hadn’t changed; anywhere else in the village she would be placed at the head together with Hiccup, jarl and dróttin side-by-side as leaders. Here, she still sat between her cousin Marthe and her cousin Bardr, both of whom were older than she by a handful of years and had the temperament of Ruffnut and Tuffnut on a good day—which was to say, they were horrible but tended to direct their horribleness only at each other, which was why Astrid had always been sat between them.

“I’m glad yer back, Astrid,” her aunt Eyja confessed to her, leaning over the massive bowl of porridge that sat between them. “Your cousins have been a right menace at every meal without something to separate ‘em.”

“I heard that,” said Bardr, and, “ _Mmmhhh-mhhmh,_ ” said Marthe, through a mouthful of stew. Astrid ignored both of them and ate her porridge in silence, listening for the rafter-dwelling terrors over the din of utensils scraping plates and twenty eastmen talking over each other with their mouths full.

She was thinking about the eleven men that hadn’t returned with her, and wondering how much quieter their morning meal tables were without them.

“So, Astrid,” this came from Hallkatla, another aunt who lived three houses down, worked as a fisherwoman off the coast, and just about ran the entirety of the Hofferson clan. “Tell us about yer journey! We helped unload the ships, only fair we get to hear the tale.”

The table went quiet. Astrid had been dreading the question, and she paused with her spoon in her mouth to give her time to think of a response. She would not dance around the subject of their losses; the dead deserved the honor of their stories being told, their glory sung and names remembered long after their funeral pyres cooled.

She set down her spoon, and opened her mouth; and that was when a knock came at the door, echoing loudly in the sudden silence.

“Od!” barked Hallkatla, indicating her youngest son at the table, only six winters old. “Get the door.”

The boy jumped off the bench and scurried over to it. There he pulled open the lock and stuck out his head; pulling it back in, he exclaimed, “It’s the hiccup, ma!”

“Shouldn’t call the jarl by his given name,” complained Asgerd, “only ‘my jarl’.” He was old and traditional, and, robbed of his chance to bemoan the terrible terrors, needed a new topic about which to complain.

“Please don’t call me that,” said Hiccup’s voice reedily from the other side of the door, “my father used to make me _babysit_ Od. He really doesn’t need to call me his jarl.”

“Hiccup!” said Hallkatla, who, unlike most of the village, had never developed the compunction to call Hiccup anything else, and furthermore never listened to Asgerd for longer than she could take to throw him. “What can we do for ya?”

“I came to see Astrid,” said Hiccup’s voice, as Od still hadn’t opened the door.

Hallkatla said, “Od! Let Hiccup inside.”

“No,” said Astrid, quickly, “it’s all right, I’d rather see him outside. I’ve eaten my fill, anyway—thank you for the meal, aunt Eyja.” And with that she climbed out from the bench between Bardr and Marthe, who promptly took to yanking at each other’s hair like children, and hurried out the door.

It was bitterly cold outside, colder than it should have been so early in the harvest season; Astrid’s breath misted before her the moment she shut the door behind her. Hiccup himself looked very cold where he stood just beyond the stoop, wrapped from head to toe in a fur cloak. Toothless was conspicuously absent.

“What do you want,” said Astrid, more bluntly than she meant. They had parted roughly the night before, but she wasn’t angry with Hiccup so much as herself; nothing he’d said had been untrue, after all, and none of it had been anything she hadn’t already thought of.

“I wanted—” Hiccup winced, like he was trying to sort through his words. For a jarl he wasn’t a very good speaker, though Astrid knew he could belt out a speech with the best of them when it counted; if she was being fair, he was still better with words than she was, because Astrid had always preferred swinging an axe to talking. “I wanted to apologize,” Hiccup said at last. “For last night. What I said was cruel, and it wasn’t what you needed to hear. I was tired, but that’s no excuse.”

Taken aback, Astrid wrapped her arms around herself against the pervasive chill and said, “Hiccup, it’s all right. You didn’t need to come all the way down here to apologize.”

It was Hiccup’s turn to appear taken aback. He searched her face, she didn’t know for what; and said, “You didn’t—you didn’t come home last night. You said you might not until after Kopareykir. I thought maybe you thought it was a, a, a punishment, but you haven’t done anything to deserve that. You won a great victory for Berk, and I treated it like a loss.”

“It was a loss,” Astrid bit out. It had been a loss of lives, a loss of people she’d known and whose company and skills she had valued. By any definition, that was not a true victory, no matter that the gods may have been the ones to decree that they die. If Astrid hadn’t failed— “Wait, this is all because I didn’t come home?”

Hiccup seemed to shrink further under his cloak. He was taller now than he had been as a child, but still slight; looking at him now in the gray light of day, Astrid thought he looked very tired and older than his years, dark patches under his eyes and hair hanging messily around his face. It looked as though he had cut it himself, no better than when he’d spent a year away, charting the territories to Berk’s east and north. “Did you sleep?” she asked, softly.

“Not well,” Hiccup admitted, but immediately rallied with, “It’s all right. I don’t need to sleep much anyway—I haven’t been, a lot, uh—”

“Hiccup,” sighed Astrid. They may have never been lovers, whatever their marriage may have suggested, but they’d always been friends, the only ones either of them could readily trust with their lives. Worry for him settled back into her with a familiar weight. “Let me get my cloak,” she said, and went back inside to fetch it.

Inside, Eyja asked, “Is the hiccup callin’ ya back out, Astrid?” while Astrid walked past the Hofferson-packed table and found her red fur-lined cloak among all the others; it was the only one with so much color, and had been given to her by Johann at her and Hiccup’s wedding.

“Yeah,” she said, and, “don’t wait up, okay? I’ll be back tonight at the latest.”

“All right, _dóttir,_ ” said Hallkatla.

Asgerd harrumphed, “ _Young people,_ runnin’ ‘round as they please.” Astrid shook her head and took her axe from where she’d set it by the door, drew her cloak around her shoulders, and stepped back outside.

Hiccup was crouching in the dirt past the stoop with a pained expression on his face. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut; they snapped back open when Astrid closed the door with a click, and he recovered quickly, not-quite springing to his feet. It was more of a calculated stagger. “Ready?” he said, with a crooked sort of smile.

Astrid didn’t need to ask what the matter was; and it wouldn’t have done any good to do so, anyway, because Hiccup would just deny that his leg was giving him trouble. In this, if nothing else, he was the very model of their people: pretending nothing hurt, pretending everything was easy. _It’s only fun if you get a scar out of it._

Hiccup had certainly gotten a scar out of it, but Astrid didn’t think he would ever describe fighting the Red Death as _fun._

As it was, she didn’t saying anything at all, just stuck out her elbow for him to grab on before they set out across the frozen yard between the Hofferson houses. He did, just as wordlessly, and they made a slow and shuffling pace out the gate and into the street, moving as they were on three legs and one metal peg, with two heavy long cloaks in the way.

“Okay,” Astrid said, as they headed down the street at the same rate, “seriously. Now that my family’s not waiting on us and no one’s listening in—how have you been? If you’re not sleeping, with a likely war brewing and the Thing in only a few weeks—”

“Not helping!” exclaimed Hiccup. “Why do you think I can’t sleep in the first place, Astrid?”

“I don’t know,” Astrid said, dryly, “I assumed it was because your father up and left to go adventuring with Valka and dumped the mantle of jarl on you at a tender twenty winters.”

“Yes,” Hiccup said, “yes, that’s it exactly,” and, “I worry about everything that’s going wrong, and then I worry about everything that _could_ go wrong, and then I realize I’m not sleeping enough and I worry about _that_ , and then I realize I’ve been tossing all night and _oh_ , those are terrors singing on the rooftop and that’s the sun that’s spilling through the cracks in my window, and there’s another night gone.” He gestured with his free hand as he spoke, and Astrid gripped his shoulder with her own spare hand, keeping him steady as they walked.

“You realize you’re doing great, right?” she said, when he’d finished. “No one’s attacking each other yet, and you told me yourself during the feast that Gothi said the harvest ought to be enough, and Fishlegs and Nobber seem happy as cats in cream with how the academy and the aviary are growing . . .”

“You don’t understand,” Hiccup said, shaking his head. “If any of it goes wrong, all of it will go wrong. And then it’s all on me, and it’s not all on me the way it used to be, where it just meant dad would know I failed and look disappointed or angry—now it’s people’s lives, five hundred people’s lives, more if you count what could happen to our allies if the Hooligans were out of the picture.”

“I understand,” said Astrid, quietly. “Hiccup, after that raid—if there’s anyone that knows exactly what it’s like to worry about lives and then be the reason they’re lost, it’s me.”

“Okay, maybe you do understand,” Hiccup admitted. And then, in a humble: “But that doesn’t help me sleep, and it certainly doesn’t help me sleep when I put my foot in my mouth so badly that you go stomping off to stay with your family rather than coming home after months being away. Which is why I came to apologize.”

“And I appreciate it,” Astrid promised. Quieter, steadily, she said, “It means a lot, Hiccup, really. And if it means so much to you that I come home, I can do that, too.”

“It’s not that I mind you visiting your family,” Hiccup back-pedaled, “it’s just, it’s been so long, and I was afraid I’d made you so angry you wouldn’t come back . . .”

Practical as she ever was, Astrid pointed out, “It’s past now. I’m not angry, and you need sleep, and if nothing else you can rest easier knowing my sworn axe is nearby in case some lunatic with a blood feud shows up in the night.”

“Ah, yes,” said Hiccup, and grinned at her with an earnestness she realized she hadn’t seen since before she’d left, “the thought Dagur bursting into my house to launch a reprisal attack in middle of the night makes me feel _much_ better.”

“Damn right it does,” said Astrid, and glanced around. They’d made it most of the way down the road, which ran from the Hofferson homesteads, past the house of Mulch and Bucket and into the center of town. A few other people who had already finished with their morning meals were out and about, carrying crates or baskets, heading out to take care of their tasks for the day.

From here it was just a stone’s throw to the harbor, or another brisk walk over to where the Haddock household sat in its echoing empty glory. Thinking of it, Astrid had to admit to herself that maybe there was more to her running home—to her _old_ home, the one she’d known since she was a child—in the wake of disaster than just avoiding spending the night in the same house as Hiccup.

They walked a ways further across the center of the town green, Hiccup limping slightly. He hid it well, considering that she could feel how heavily he leaned against her arm, but Astrid was about to ask if he’d consider stopping when Hiccup came to an abrupt stop all on his own. “What is it?” she asked, concerned.

“Do you hear that?” he said. The color had drained suddenly from his face, leaving him looking even more gray in the morning’s pale light.

“Hear what?” Astrid asked, and looked around in askance. She couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary at first; no suspicious sounds, no sign of danger—

—it hit her after perhaps ten seconds of listening for sounds of attack or cries of warning: the silence that suddenly blanketed Berk, unnatural in its totality. “The terrors,” she said, slowly and very quietly, feeling as though disturbing this strange silence might bring something worse. “They’ve stopped singing.”

“They’ve _all_ stopped singing,” said Hiccup. “It’s far too early, and they’re not even chirping, they’re—completely silent.” Around the green, those other villagers that were out were stopping, too, looking up at the vacuum of sound left by the absence of the terrors’ odd little tunes.

Astrid was the first to notice what _else_ the terrors were doing. “What are they all looking at?” she said. Every terror in sight seemed to be looking north, noses turned upward as they stared, hardly blinking—if they were at all—towards something Astrid couldn’t see, no matter how she craned to follow their line of sight.

“I don’t know,” said Hiccup, a note of frantic worry entering his voice. “Quick,” he said, turning back towards the Haddock longhouse, “Go check on Stormfly, I’m going to check on Toothless—if they’re doing the same thing, then something’s up for sure. Dragons don’t act like this unless there’s something very wrong.”

“Hiccup,” said Astrid, but he was already jogging, in a hobbled sort of way, towards the Haddock homestead; and Astrid, letting out a frustrated grunt, turned around and bolted back from whence they’d come, where Stormfly would be curled up in the family’s newly-built dragon stable, surrounded by insulated walls and fire-warmed rocks.

She skid back into the yard, banging open the gate and scaring several of the chickens that were out picking at the ground in the process. They scattered with loud squawks—still the only sound Astrid could hear in the town save for her own breath and the noise of the gate bouncing against the fence and ricocheting to click back closed—and she weaved around them to get to the stable, lifting the heavy bar lock.

Inside was warm and dark, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, what she saw was just what Hiccup had feared.

Stormfly, too, was staring determinately to the north, head tilted sideways like she was listening. Astrid reached out to comfort her—scratch around her spines—but Stormfly only shook her head and danced away; clearly not interested in comforts. “Okay, fine, then,” said Astrid to her, and, meaning to meet back up with Hiccup, left the stable.

She stopped by the longhouse before she left, scraping her boots over the stoop to make sure no mud clung to them and sweeping her cloak back over her shoulder.

Inside, great-uncle Asgerd said, “At last, the cursed things shut their yaps.”

* * *

The Haddock longhouse was a looming thing, sitting at the premier position in the town square as it was. These days the icon of Berk was painted garishly across the front, with Hiccup’s first shield nailed symbolically over the door now that he was head of the Haddock clan instead of Stoick; and it was here that Astrid lived and where she went now, jogging back across the frozen dirt of the town’s sparse roads and through the decorated arch over the opening in the fence.

She found Fishlegs and a reluctant-looking Snotlout already at the door, Fishlegs with a massive tome under one arm and Snotlout leaning against the wall with his mace hanging at his side. “Astrid!” said Fishlegs, and, “Have you seen Hiccup?”

“He called us up here and now he’s not even bothered to show up,” whined Snotlout, and inspected the spikes on his weapon. Astrid saw the terrors that normally swarmed across the Haddock house’s rooftops were chirping again, no longer staring unblinking towards some undetermined foe: still, they seemed quieter, cautious, like a nest after a great upset.

“I’m sure he’ll be here,” she said, and proceeded to ignore Snotlout in favor of Fishlegs. “Is there anything in the dragon lore about why all of our dragons would go dead silent and stare north? I’ve never seen this happen before.”

“Not that I know of,” said Fishlegs, shaking his head, and hefted the tome he held. “But there might be something we missed. The Hooligans of old tended to take notes about how to kill them more so than how they behaved, you know, but there’s more than you’d think, because knowing how they react to danger’s pretty key to hunting them down.”

“Good,” said Astrid, and turned to go back to the arch, intending to locate Hiccup—only to find him heading into the yard with Ruffnut and Tuffnut in his wake, both looking very cold and very like people who had just been pulled out of bed without their morning meal, blinking blearily and pulling their cloaks closer around themselves.

“Scaulder and Torch did the same thing as our dragons,” Hiccup told her, “and while I was getting Ruff and Tuff, we saw that all the thunderdrums and scauldrons that live in the harbor doing it, too.” These days Ruff and Tuff lived in a separate house near to the water, given how often they traveled with trader Johann.

“You think they’re sensing some sort of attack?” said Astrid. “Alvin, snapped at last?”

Hiccup frowned worriedly, and crossed his arms across his chest. His cloak was thrown back over his shoulders in the wake of his hurried run across town. “I don’t know. The sentries haven’t reported any sightings of a fleet. I sent one of them out to scout—I don’t like this one bit. I wish we could ask our dragons what’s wrong.”

“I’ve brought the town records like you asked,” said Fishlegs.

“And I brought myself,” said Snotlout, “like you demanded, _oh jarl._ ”

Hiccup gave him a flat look, and said, “Hookfang too?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Snotlout. “Look, it’s not the first time the dragons have gotten weird without warning.”

“But it’d be the first time when it was meaningless,” Hiccup said. “Snotlout, I want you and your _drótt_ up and ready at all times, alternating watches. If something’s coming, I want Berk to be ready.”

“Fine,” said Snotlout. “Pay us.”

“Fine,” said Hiccup. He didn’t even take the time to empathically roll his eyes or argue, which told Astrid exactly how bad he thought this was. “Listen, people, the Bog Burglars are due to arrive in the next three days. The rest of the tribes are to arrive shortly after, one after another—the Thing would be the _perfect_ time for one of our rivals to launch an attack, cause chaos between us. Or if they’ve gotten to anyone we believed to be an ally—”

“What are you worried about?” said Snotlout. “We’ll just beat them out. We’ve got dragons, remember? For someone who keeps having to fight for them, you forget a lot—”

“Curse it, Snotlout,” said Hiccup, hands clenching into fists. Astrid was about ready to hit Snotlout herself. “If there is a battle on Berk, who do you think is going to take the most casualties?”

“The guys without the dragons,” said Snotlout, truculently, and did roll his eyes.

Hiccup looked ready to pull out his own hair. Astrid took the initiative and grabbed Snotlout by the collar; he yelped and tried to pull away, but she was strong and dragged him towards the arch, ignoring his protests of “Astrid. Astrid! Wait!”

At the arch, she leaned in close, tightened her grip on the collar of his tunic, and said, “Ready your warriors.”

“Okay, Astrid,” wheezed Snotlout.

“Is that how you address your tribe’s war leader?” asked Astrid, her tone dropping back into falsely sweet; she made a show of looking away from Snotlout’s struggling form, inspecting the fastening of her glove at the wrist.

“Okay, _dróttning!_ Yes, _dróttning!_ ”

“Better,” said Astrid, and sent him sprawling out the gate with a shove.

She turned to find the stares of Hiccup, Fishlegs and the twins—now markedly less sleepy—focused upon her. “You were saying, Hiccup?” she said.

“Uh,” said Hiccup, recovering quickly, “yes. Okay. We need to prepare for the Thing, and Fishlegs and I need to go over all the town records and notes on what the dragons’ actions could mean. You need to go to Kopareykir, but if you could make sure Snotlout’s drótt organizes before you do and also get your own ready, I’d appreciate it. And you and you,” Hiccup pointed to the twins with two fingers, “send a terror to Johann, find out if any of the other tribes are headed this way with more weapons than necessary, then prepare to receive the Bog Burglars as planned, all right?”

“After I’ve spoken to the families of the men I lost on my raid,” said Astrid, quietly.

The twins just said, “Yes, my jarl!”

“I think you two might be the only ones who aren’t still calling me ‘the hiccup’.” Hiccup frowned, and ran a hand over his face. “Go, go.”

The twins shuffled off, squeezing past each other at the arch; Fishlegs, Astrid and Hiccup were left alone, Fishlegs looking vaguely uncomfortable and decidedly worried. “Hiccup,” he said, “you once told me that the only time you saw Toothless afraid—with the exception of when you were in danger—was when the Red Death was calling all the dragons to bring their catch.”

Astrid felt a chill, and one that wasn’t caused by the arctic winds that so often bit at Berk. Hiccup pulled his hand away from his face and stared at Fishlegs. “You think there might be another one of those in the Archipelago?”

“I don’t know,” said Fishlegs, and tapped the tome. “But the Red Death wasn’t mentioned in here, either, remember? What with not a single scouting vessel ever coming back from his island.”

“But we’d know about it,” said Hiccup, like he knew how weak the protest sounded. “If something that big arrived, if something that big were here . . .”

“Then maybe this is us knowing,” said Astrid.

“This is bad,” said Hiccup, looking haunted. Astrid wondered if he was remembering the Red Death’s last battle, his mad, reckless rush upward with the gargantuan dragon giving chase. “This is really, really bad, isn’t it? Oh, gods.”

Fishlegs shuffled from foot to foot, and said, “Uh, yeah, it might be. If I’m right, then yeah, it’s really, _really_ bad. Meatlug eating obsidian bad.”

“Okay,” said Hiccup, “okay, I’m going to,” and, taking a deep breath, to halt his obvious building anxiety, “I’m . . . I never thought I’d be saying this, but I wish dad were here.”

“To do what?” Astrid wanted to know. “Smack you over the head and thunder,” she pitched her voice Stoick-low, “ _‘son, if there’s a big dragon comin’ yer way, ye grab an axe an’ ye deal with it, that’s how we’ve done it for generations!’_?”

Hiccup gave a startled laugh, the sound bursting out of him like he didn’t know where it came from. “All right, maybe I don’t.” But he looked like he didn’t mean it, not really; and Astrid thought she knew what he meant. There was something very reassuring about having Stoick the Vast at your back, even when Stoick didn’t know what he was doing any more than you did.

“Hiccup,” urged Fishlegs, and tapped the book in reminder.

“Yeah,” said Hiccup, and turned to Astrid. “I’ll see you later. In a week, if not before you depart.”

He looked very much like he wanted to take her hand, and very like a young man with too much responsibility on his shoulders, just then. Astrid embraced him tightly before she went out the arch, for reassurance and to remind him that she didn’t hold the night before against him, saying only, “Odin guide your steps.”

“May Thor guide yours,” answered Hiccup, and they parted.


	3. Prepare for Trouble

When Hiccup was twelve winters old, Stoick had taken him along for a walk throughout the village for what Stoick referred to as “chiefing” and everyone else referred to as, “oh, gods, the jarl is coming, hide _that._ ”

Hiccup had come along only reluctantly, because even then he’d been industrious and already making the first of his inventions, sketching diagrams on the edges of the parchment on which he’d learned his letters (and he’d learned those before anyone else, even Fishlegs, but Stoick had never cared about that.)

Now, standing on the pier in Berk’s harbor, he thought of what Stoick had said to him then, as he’d trailed after his father’s looming, broad-shouldered shape: _a jarl shows no fear, a jarl shows no pain, a jarl must be above weak personal feelings._

His leg gave a sharp twinge of pain, and Hiccup grit his teeth and shifted his position only a little, watching—along with all the rest of the townspeople who had come out for the occasion—as the Bog Burglars’ envoy ships glided towards the docks.

At Hiccup’s side, Gobber scratched his chin with his hook, and said, “I don’t remember the Bog Burglars ever bein’ this _quiet,_ do ye, Hiccup?”

Hiccup swallowed and cleared his throat. He wouldn’t be felled by cold weather and a bad leg; the Thing was too important, and anyway, it wasn’t even that bad—look at Gobber, standing cheerfully next to him on a peg leg and with a missing arm, or Bucket up on the upper tiers of the docks with half his skull a patchwork mess. It made Hiccup feel like a joke, being so easily dropped by his own wound.

A little belatedly, he opened his mouth to say _no, I don’t either._

Which was when, entirely without warning or even the courtesy of swooping out of the clouds, a dragon appeared directly overhead, heralded by a whooping cry.

Every person on the pier gasped or yelled and everybody scrambled; Hiccup jumped, and the twins, just at his back, yelped, “Whoa!”

Axes were drawn. Then, as everyone’s eyes and brains caught up to their nervous systems and it became apparent that the beast overhead was a massive changewing flying the colors of the Burglars and that the laughing rider upon its back was not, in fact, attacking or ordering it to fire, axes were lowered, and Hiccup cried, “ _Cami!_ ”

“Greetin’s from the Bog Burglars, Berk!” shouted the pale-haired girl on the big dragon’s back. She was as tiny as ever, and her hair was worn loose, pinned only by her ostentatious horned helmet; her face was painted with the Burglars’s colors, purple and green streaks running down her cheeks under the eyepatch that covered her recently-lost right eye.

Behind her, the ships that had been so quiet in the harbor burst into cheers, heads popping up from behind the shields lining the longships’ sides. They wore grins from ear-to-ear as they took to rowing towards the docks, each rower proudly painted in the same colors as Camicazi.

“Greetings to the Bog Burglars,” said Hiccup, laughing easily for what felt like the first time in ages as the crowd around him breathed in relief (and, admittedly, a little disappointment, because the Hooligans _did_ love to fight.) “If you need a place to land that monster, the town square is open.”

“Thanks for the permission, _dragon-conqueror,_ ” taunted Camicazi good-naturedly, and made the crowd gasp again (with appreciation, this time) as she swung upside-down on the changewing’s neck, her hair falling to hang down like a wall of vines. “Me girls can dock, can’t they?”

“Absolutely,” said Hiccup, fervently; and stumbled back just in time as Camicazi leapt off her dragon and it swept away up the cliff face and into the village, leaving her to drop to a perfect landing mere inches in front of him.

They engaged in a formal hand-clasp—”Ow,” said Hiccup—and exchanged a quieter greeting (“Can’t live without making an _entrance,_ can you,” said Hiccup, “you’ve got to tell me how you hid together with a changewing,” and Camicazi only smirked). Meanwhile the Bog Burglar ships docked and threw down their anchors, the people of Berk helping them throw over their planks and climb out onto the walkways, chattering all the while.

“Listen,” said Camicazi, “there’s someone I think wants to see ya.”

“Who’s that?” said Hiccup, and Camicazi was saved having to answer him when Tuffnut shoved Hiccup aside and pointed towards where a young woman with a familiarly dark head of hair was making her way up the steps to the ledge occupied by Hiccup and entourage.

“It’s _Heather!_ ” he said, and Ruffnut followed up immediately with,

“She’s a _Bog Burglar?_ ”

“She is now,” said Camicazi proudly. “Joined up a few years ago, after ‘er parents decided to stop gallavantin’ ‘round the Archipelago w’out protection.”

Heather pushed her way through the crowd of mingling Bog Burglars and Hooligans, making her way to the small clearing generated by the presence of the twins and Camicazi, all three of whom had the useful quality of making people stand back lest they lose fingers or toes. “Hiccup!” she said.

She looked much as she had years before, gleaming black braid thrown over her shoulder and long enough now to reach her belt; she was, however, decidedly more well-fed and better dressed, with fur-lined leather gear of her own and a large ornate belt buckle. “You look good,” Hiccup told her, unable to suppress a smile; for all that he’d said otherwise when they’d parted, he hadn’t thought they’d meet again, particularly given her parents’ clanless travels.

“You look _amazing,_ ” corrected Tuffnut; Ruffnut hit him over the helmet with her fist, sending it thumping down over his nose.

“I feel good,” Heather confessed to Hiccup, and they shared a rather less painful handshake and he and Camicazi had. “Camicazi saved my life, did she tell you that?”

“Sure did,” said Camicazi, beaming at Hiccup when he turned to look towards her, fists planted on her hips and chest puffed out in pride. “She helped me tame the Invisible Menace.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Hiccup, and he was. “Come, we’ve got everything set up at the Great Hall to receive you—there’s lots to talk about, right? We can catch up as we go over our plans for the winter and the northern tribes . . .”

“So your jarling’s going well, then?”

“Uh,” Hiccup said, as they started towards the village main. Around them, the crowd continued to move in various directions—the Bog Burglars had brought things to trade, and everyone was interested in getting their hands on something new—but the entourage and Camicazi’s _hird,_ now disembarked, followed them. “Not as badly as it could be, so, yeah, you could say that. And yours?”

“Better ‘n ever,” said Camicazi. “The Lava Louts tried to attack our coast a week ago and we beat ‘em into the _ground._ ” She punched a small fist into her other hand for emphasis, and ground it there to showcase just how badly the Bog Burglars beat them. “We’re gettin’ rich off their ongoin’ stupidity.”

“I wish he’d accepted that ceasefire with you,” said Hiccup.

“ _I_ don’t,” said Cami, and, reminded, dug around in the pouch attached to her belt. “I got somethin’ for ya that you might be needin’, what with hostin’ the Thing this year.”

“What,” said Hiccup, nervously, hoping Camicazi wasn’t about to hand him poison, or perhaps another knife. She’d sent several over the years, proclaiming a knife smithed by a woman would always be better than anything Gobber or Hiccup could throw together in their own smithy; Gobber had been fuming about for _years._

To his surprise what Cami took out was a large pewter pendant, which she dropped into the hand he held out for it. It was in the shape of mjölnir, meant as a protective amulet. “Oh,” he said.

“She got it off a barbarian with the biggest axe I’ve ever seen,” said Heather from behind them, helpfully. “Eight feet tall, and she got behind ‘im with her sword ‘n felled him like a tree.”

“Didn’t do him much good, then, did it?” said Hiccup weakly.

“The way I see it, it did a perfectly good job,” said Camicazi. “It got ‘im killed so it could come to me, and protect the good guys.” She punched a fist into the air, and grabbed the pendant out of Hiccup’s hands so that she could reach over his head and hang it ‘round his neck, a comical action given that she hardly even went up to his shoulder. Hiccup bent his neck obligingly, and said,

“Well, thank you very much, Cami.”

“You’re welcome,” said Camicazi, whacked him on the back, and skipped ahead up the steps with a peal of laughter, unbound hair bouncing loosely across her back.

“She ‘asn’t changed much, ‘as she,” said Gobber, long-sufferingly.

“If you ever meet something capable of changing Cami,” Hiccup said, “I’ll eat my prosthetic.”

“Wouldn’t take that bet,” said Ruffnut, and everyone concurred.

* * *

Years ago, the Bog Burglars and the Hooligans had been aggressive rivals, ever since a Bog Burglar stke Grimbead the Ghastly’s shield. Now they were no longer aggressive—Hiccup and Camicazi would never have stood for that—but they still liked being rivals, and being rivals meant games and races, and while Berk waited for the rest of the tribes to arrive for the Thing, games and races were what they had.

The windows of the Haddock house shook as the Bog Burglars and the Hooligans raced their dragons in a large circle that cut through the village green and then went out around the edges of the island. Hiccup looked up from the schematic he and Camicazi had been poring over, then went back to it; they’d go out and watch the final rounds of the races, as was, of course, appropriate (and participate in a race of their own, against the few dragons that could be considered evenly matched with Toothless; Hiccup looked forward to that, having not gotten the chance to fly in days) but for now had inventions to share and consider.

“This won’t work,” Camicazi was saying. She jabbed a finger at a hinge in the dragon-mounted crossbow Hiccup had designed and drawn up a schematic for. “This ‘ere, you could break the dragon’s neck if it draws even a hair too far to the left!”

Hiccup craned over her shoulder. This was easy, given Camicazi’s height. “Oh,” he said, “you’re right,” and unrolled one of the many schematics Camicazi had brought with her, which had been stuffed into a tube.

She was one of the only people Hiccup had ever met that appreciated the fine points of invention and _making_ things, rather than just smithing things that were heavy or sharp. It was little wonder the Bog Burglars were the best-prepared for the winter, with how clever and clever-fingered its many inhabitants were.

(Of course, the only reason she ever shared with Hiccup was because Camicazi thought a rival—even a friendly one—wasn’t much fun if they got wiped off the map by their enemies.)

“Wish you didn’t write all your notes in your backwards code,” complained Camicazi, while Hiccup looked over the schematic he’d opened; it depicted changewing-scale armor, identical to the suit Camicazi was currently wearing. It was, he realized, precisely what had allowed her to appear unannounced over the harbor that morning.

“Changewing scales react to living changewings?” he said, awed.

“Sure do,” said Camicazi. She was drawing fixes to his work with red ink, adding little notes in her own runic chickenscratch.

“Imagine what we could do with this,” Hiccup said. “I mean, you must already have ambush squads planned, but think of how much easier this could make hunting for changewing riders—this could help us in the winter, and if we could find a way to integrate scale covers for weapons and wagons that would be invaluable in battle—”

There was a pounding at the door below, and Hiccup cut himself off and blew out a frustrated sigh. Of all the things he desperately missed from his life before becoming jarl, having time for Toothless came first, but having the spare time to work without interruption came in as a close second. He still innovated—of course he did, it was hardly something he could turn off—but getting his contraptions built without being dragged away to resolve disputes had become increasingly difficult.

It had, he thought bitterly as he turned and went down the stairs, taken Camicazi’s arrival to get him time that people respected; his own authority and demands to not be disturbed were, as ever, ignored.

He threw open the door more abruptly than he’d meant, and said “What is it?”

Tuffnut was on the other side of the door, looking winded. “My jarl, dude, _Mildew_ ’s in town.”

“Oh, good,” said Hiccup, and stared blandly at his boots, because of all the things he didn’t want to deal with, Mildew was—well. Mildew was on the list, anyway. He looked tiredly back up at Tuffnut. “Is he selling overpriced food to the villagers again?”

“Worse,” said Tuffnut, and tossed his knotted dreadlocks back over his shoulder as he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the academy, from which the races were being conducted. “He’s talking about—uh,” Tuffnut paused, snapping his fingers next to his own head as he appeared to try to remember, “you know, the ocean freezing over, mass death, sun and moon being eaten by the gods . . .”

“ _Ragnarök?_ ” said Hiccup, aghast. “Mildew’s telling two assembled tribes of eastmen that the end of the world is coming?”

“That’s the one,” said Tuffnut. “Should we do something, or what?”

“Yes!” cried Hiccup, and briefly wished he could tear in two so that he might start running towards the academy to get Mildew to stop talking and fetch Camicazi at the same time. “Cami!” he yelled.

Directly behind him, Camicazi said, “Trouble in dragon paradise, huh?”

“We are definitely _not_ paradise,” said Hiccup, and, “come on, we need to get down there before Mildew gets everyone freaked out about the harvest. Morale’s bad enough as it is.”

Camicazi went past him, stuck two fingers in her mouth, and whistled so shrilly that Tuffnut covered his ears and winced. There was a loud scratching noise above them, and when he looked up Hiccup saw claw marks appear in the wood of the Haddock house above the door, a scratch even going through the shield.

Invisible Menace appeared above them, and Camicazi said, “Down here, ya lug,” at which the dragon jumped onto the ground with a thunderous thump.

Camicazi scrambled into her saddle and helped Hiccup back up behind her. He held on to the Invisible Menace’s spikes, and Camicazi launched them into the air, heading directly for the academy.

Hiccup could see Mildew before they landed. The crowd was assembled in the stands around the former dragon killing ground, ostensibly looking out over the cliffside that dropped into the sea, where the dragon riders would fly past as they raced; instead, they were watching Mildew shouting from where he stood at the academy entrance, gesturing with his staff.

“Curse him,” groaned Hiccup.

Camicazi said, “Can do,” and sent the Invisible Menace in a sudden swoop downward that made Hiccup’s stomach lurch, flying hardly a few feet over Mildew’s head and sending him staggering and covering his head with his hands. The Bog Burglars in the crowd cheered wildly.

The Invisible Menace touched down gently in an open space between Mildew in the crowd, and Hiccup leapt carefully off, the engineering in his leg lessening the impact of the jump but still painful, particularly after the cold morning. Camicazi swung off after him.

Mildew, when he realized the dragon-shaped danger had passed, ceased cowering and pointed furiously at Hiccup with his staff. “You!” he shouted, so theatrically that Hiccup was sure he was still performing for the crowd. “ _Ragnarök_ is coming, and you are so blind that you will see us all dead!”

“What are you doing here, Mildew?” said Hiccup, as though he didn’t know. “I thought I told you you weren’t allowed past Berk’s docks. By decree of the jarl. _Me,_ if you’ve forgotten.”

Camicazi leaned over to him. “On Bog Burglar island we steal the possessions of anyone who ignores the jarl’s orders and send them packing on a raft in their knickers,” she said.

Out of the side of his mouth, Hiccup said, “Not helping.”

“I am here to bring warning! Performing a public service!” thundered Mildew. The years hadn’t changed him, but only, Hiccup thought, because they’d already done their worst; he was as ancient and crotchety as ever, and, if the rumors were to be believed, romantically inclined towards his favorite sheep.

Hiccup shuddered at the thought, and wrenched his thoughts back to the topic at hand out of self-preservation. “You’re not performing a public service,” he said, “you’re fearmongering. We’re here to celebrated before a coming Thing, and you only want people to—what, cower in their homes? Get lost, Mildew.”

“The last two winters have been the harshest we’ve ever seen,” Mildew pressed on, “crops dying, rivers frozen far longer than they should be. This winter will be even worse—it’s the _fimbulvetr,_ Hiccup, it’s the beginning of the end, you must prepare, you fool.”

“Mildew,” said Hiccup, “if it were really _Ragnarök_ —which it definitely isn’t—we’d all be dead whether or not we prepared. That’s why it’s called the end of the world.” Turning to face the crowd, he raised his voice and shouted, “Pay this man no mind! Need I remind you how he betrayed Berk to the Outcasts? We nearly lost our entire island to the whispering deaths they released into the caves underneath!”

There was angry murmuring amongst the crowd. Camicazi grinned her wickedest grin and whispered something to her dragon, whicj bent its neck so that she might reach its ears.

“But—” said Mildew, and never got the chance to finish, because Camicazi’s dragon spit at him.

It didn’t spit acid, of course. That would have been needlessly violent, and the Bog Burglars weren’t the Bersekers; they didn’t go in for needlessly violent, not if they could help it. The Invisible Menace simply collected its saliva, waited for the perfect moment, and spit—covering Mildew from head to toe in thick, gelatinous ooze, like he was swimming in snot.

Mildew shrieked.

The Bog Burglars cheered. This time, so did the Hooligans.

“Thanks,” Hiccup muttered.

“No problem,” said Camicazi, patting Invisible Menace lovingly on the neck, and Hiccup—watching the crowd’s glee—breathed a sigh of relief.

His relief came too soon, because the terrible terrors chose that very moment to repeat their morning trick. There were dozens upon dozens of them out with the crowd, perched on the cage top of the academy and all around the stands, looking for food as hungry eastmen with poor manners watched the races and dropped the occasional scrap.

Just then, every terror there stopped its quiet chirping, raised its neck, and stared fixedly north.

Every larger dragon dotting the crowd did the same, which was what drew the stares. Hiccup, a sick feeling in his stomach, saw Hookfang rise amidst the sea of heads and helmets, his large, slitted yellow eyes squinting out over the sea.

“Oh, no,” said Hiccup.

Camicazi, staring up at the Invisible Menace, who was doing the very same thing, yanked on its reins. When the Menace didn’t respond, she said, “What’re they _doin’?_ ”

Hiccup didn’t get a chance to answer her. At that moment, every terror surrounding the academy—every terror, Hiccup was sure, in all of Berk—launched itself into the air with a shriek, flapped its wings, and twisted to fly determinately _south._

“Oh, no,” said Hiccup, and watched as the lot of them formed a flock overhead—heralded by the gasps of Bog Burglars and Hooligans alike—and blew away over the rooftops, shrieking to each other like they might have during a migration but with a note that Hiccup, after many years of having them living under his own rafters, recognized as fear.

Horrified, he looked down, towards Hookfang and the others. Most of the dragons had stayed put, though they, too, were watching the terrors flee whatever unseen danger they feared; Hookfang looked like he considered launching himself after them, but stayed put.

Small miracles, thought Hiccup, and then edited out _miracles_ in favor of _not outright disasters,_ because as the terrors disappeared over the other edge of down, the entire crowd broke into worried shouts and complaint.

“Everybody calm down!” shouted Hiccup, trying to make reassuring gestures towards the crowd, like one might towards an out-of-control dragon. “Everything is fine!”

“The terrors are _leaving!_ ” yelled back a woman in the crowd. “Everyone knows the terrors are the first to flee at any sign of danger!”

“They’re like rats!” agreed another. “If the rats are fleeing the ship—”

“—then so do you!” concurred the first. The crowd yelled in agreement.

Tuffnut, who Hiccup hadn’t noticed arrive in the chaos—leaned over Hiccup’s shoulder and said, conversationally, “I’m not saying it’s a sign of Ragnarök, my jarl, but uh. It’s playing it kinda close, don’t you think?”

Hiccup grit, “Yes, Tuffnut, thank you,” and raised his voice once again to address the crowd. “Please, everyone! Why are we here?”

“Because we’re too stupid to listen to the terrors!” cried the same woman as before.

“ _No,_ ” said Hiccup, “we’re here because the Thing will convene within three days. At that time we will dicuss all potential issues and dangers to our tribes. That’s the whole point—that’s why it’s being _held_. If the terrors leaving is a sign of anything, we can discuss it then. And until that point—”

“And until that point,” Camicazi interrupted loudly, raising her fist in the air, “we are eastmen, and we are stubborn, and we are goin’ to race dragons and drink like the end of the world _is_ nigh, because we’re goin’ down we’re gonna do it swingin’ an’ shitfaced!”

The Bog Burglars, thought Hiccup dazedly, did not disappoint. Even in the wake of the scare, they cheered uproariously at Camicazi’s words; she was their dróttning and their jarl, and every single one of them loved her. He was sure they would have followed her off the edge of the world itself, so long as she promised them it would be _fun._

Hiccup had never been good with people, not like that. Even now, he was _the hiccup,_ and everyone said so, when they thought he wasn’t listening.

But he was a Hooligan, and he knew his people, just as Stoick had. Hiccup threw his own fist in the air. “Hooligans!” he said. “Are we going to let the Bog Burglars beat us at our own game?”

The roar that rose from the crowd was deafening. Five hundred Hooligan voices roared, “ _No!_ ” and five hundred Bog Burglars started up their tribal chant ( _who can burgle better than a Bog Burglar can? no one, Burglars, Burglars, burgling Burglars!_ ). Within moments, both sides were cheering and stomping and chanting, and riders were scrambling for their mounts, readying for the next round of the races.

Hiccup turned to Camicazi. Over the noise, he yelled, “Thank you!”

Camicazi just grinned and yelled back, “Get your dragon so you can _eat my dust!_ ”

* * *

“Okay, bud,” Hiccup said. Toothless rumbled cheerfully at him, eager to fly as Hiccup set his saddle on the dragon’s back and let the straps dangle down under his belly. “We can beat Cami, right? You’re the fastest dragon I’ve ever seen.”

Toothless rumbled an affirmative at him, and wiggled excitedly, making it rather hard for Hiccup to pass the saddle’s belts through their latches from where he climbed underneath the little dragon’s torso. Hiccup laughed, and said, “Yeah, I know, I know, you wanna fly, hang on.”

Once the latches were secure, Hiccup pulled himself back out from underneath Toothless and scratched under his jaw ridge, making the dragon emit a sound not at all unlike a purr. They were together on a patch of green not far from the main of the races, just far enough for the roar of the crowd to be an indistinguishable set of noises that grew in volume every time a rider went past in the races. “Gobber wasn’t wrong about calling you a giant cat, was he,” said Hiccup.

Looking at Toothless with his saddle, he sobered and blew out a sigh. “I’m sorry I can’t fly with you every day anymore, bud. Everyone’s keeping me really busy. Once every few days is the best I can do.”

“You know,” he went on, “if you just let me put that other tail I made on you, you could fly all you wanted, and without me to slow you down.”

Toothless, who was smart enough to understand the gesture Hiccup made at his tail, emitted a decidedly less happy noise. Hiccup snorted and said, “Fine, fine, have it your way,” and, “come on,” before leading the way to the starting line of the races, right on the edge of the cliff over the ocean.

Camicazi and the Invisible Menace were already there, preening for the crowd together. She would be the only one racing again him: having considered the odds it had been decided that in the absence of Stormfly no one could possibly challenge Toothless at the races, the other promising nadders still being too young to reach such speeds. (Hiccup suspected Torch could have qualified, but the twins never raced against each other, and anyway; Torch was three times the size of even the Menace.)

“May the best man win?” he offered to her, grinning crookedly.

“Best _woman,_ ” said Camicazi, “which means me.” She smirked, and climbed up the Menace’s side into her saddle; Hiccup himself got on Toothless, who danced in place.

The previous race concluded—the Bog Burglar zippleback won—and Gobber, who had been crying the announcements from the top of the stands, placed his horn to his mouth shouted, “And now, presenting the most awaited race of the competition—the jarl and dróttning of the Bog Burglars, the best burglar in the Archipelago, Camicazi herself—” the cheering was widespread, “and our very own, night fury-riding jarl, HICCUP HORRENDOUS HADDOCK THE THIRD!”

For once, the cheering was just as widespread. Hiccup thought, dryly, that no matter how much the Hooligans liked him, they certainly liked _winning_ , and not many others among them could win against the Burglars.

“On your marks!” shouted Gobber.

“You can do this, bud,” said Hiccup to Toothless.

“Get set!” shouted gobber. Toothless tossed his head, impatient.

“ _GO!_ ” shouted Gobber, so loud that if Hiccup had still been there a moment later he would’ve worried that his voice might give out; but he wasn’t.

Toothless moved the moment Gobber started his cry. Not only did he move, he lunged; the little night fury leapt off the cliff and shot downward, wings held close, gaining speed as he lost altitude, determined and thrilled to be off the ground at last.

Hiccup, pressed close to his back to cause as little air resistance as possible, didn’t have room in his head for a single thought, too caught up in the rush and a feeling of pure glee.

Being a jarl was a duty. This— _this_ , he was _good_ at.

The wind roared in his ears. Toothless dropped down, down until Hiccup knew every spectator would be wondering whether they’d simply hit the water like a stone.

And then, in one heart-stopping moment, Toothless threw open his wings and flew. He skimmed close over the water, close enough for the spray to douse Hiccup—it slid harmlessly off his leather flightsuit, not adding any weight—and caught the wind tunnel that both he and Hiccup knew would be there, channeled by the shape of the cliffs.

They rose with the kind of speed possessed only by the ocean winds themselves; the kind of speed possessed by lightning. Hiccup’s mind, so filled with worries and burdens most of the time, went blank, leaving only the thrill of the ride and the few movements necessary to guide Toothless to turn at the right moments, catching just the right movements of the wind amidst the archipelago’s crags.

Hiccup whooped and the wind stole his voice, but it didn’t matter.

This, more than anything, was what he _lived_ for.


End file.
